NATO and its partners: changing relationships?

NATO and its partners:

changing relationships?

Our partnership policy

has been in place for a long time.

This meeting is meant to represent

both an end and a new beginning:

the Euro-Atlantic

Partnership Council.

We have had changes here

within our own institution.

Just take our new division

on emerging security challenges.

And we had the Strategic Concept

coming out of the Lisbon summit.

What has changed - and why?

We thought we needed to have

a fresh look at our partnerships.

So, what we did was to work out

a new partnership policy,

which gives us a possibility to act

more flexible with our partners,

but sometimes

more related to particular issues.

And that may be across

existing framework of partnerships,

but not taking away

those partnerships, not at all.

What happens

to older partnership structures?

We will continue

to have meetings of the EAPC...

Euro Atlantic Partnership Council

50 members: 28 NATO countries,

22 NATO partners - since 1997

Of the Mediterranean Dialogue...

Mediterranean Dialogue =

7 Mediterranean partner countries

ranging from Mauritania to Israel

Established in 1994

And ICI.

ICI = Istanbul Cooperation Initiative

4 Middle East members:

Bahrain, Qatar, Kuwait and UAE

Established in 2004

It is our task to make always

sure that those are meetings

which discuss topical issues

so that they are of relevance

to us and our partners.

In hindsight there were three

exercises going on at the same time.

A new partnership policy paper…

Then we opened up

our toolbox as we call it.

The existing partnership frameworks

all had separate toolboxes,

or menu of activities,

that has now been compiled

in principle it is open for everybody,

which means actually more work

because we need to make sure

in individual dialogue

with our partners

that we can adapt their needs

and ambitions to the offers.

There is no one size fits all.

Much more individual dialogue

with partners and that's good.

Can partnerships

deal with global problems?

We’ve realised that on many issues

we need to have some outreach

to what we call global partners

or other partners of interest.

And there is a focus for example

on outreach to China and India,

two countries with whom

we need to have dialogue.

Take an issue like the situation

off the coast of Somalia,

where all of us,

and not just us and China and India,

but a lot more sit,

litterally speaking, in the same boat.

So, we need to make sure that we

have more contacts with countries

on issues,

which don't respect borders.

We are thinking about meetings

on cyber or maritime security.

NATO has just adopted

a new maritime security strategy.

Who decides the membership

of new partnerships?

It will be the Council who decides

who will be participating

those 28 plus n.

But, mind you, partners have also

a role here. They can express interest,

they can tell us what

contributions or strategic interest

they would bring to the table

for those kinds of debates and,

as you can imagine,

discussion on maritime security

does involve some countries

more than others.

So, there will be a little bit

of a self-interest involvement

or exclusion in that process as well.

Not everybody will be

interested in every issue,

but everybody will be

interested in some issues.

I don't think

that there will be a situation

that somebody would be able to feel

excluded by that new flexibility.

How much will these changes cost?

It will be done

within existing budgets.

To this sense, we are bound

to make it cost effective.

It will not cost more.

But, you know, it will mean

that we need to be very much in sync

with our military colleagues

to look at how we spend our money

on different partnerships right now.

And if we are bound to do what we

want to do with existing resources,

we have to be smart in making sure

that we get the priorities right

in our own budget planning.

How will

the new structures be adapted?

I think all of us agree

that we will also learn...

learning by doing here,

and in this sense I think

we will have lessons learned

for ourselves after some time.

I don't think that we necessarily

then need to change papers,

but maybe need

to adapt internal thinking,

come up with some new ideas,

or rather focus on particular issues

and not so much on other issues.

But I think that's perhaps

only in a few months

that we will be

in this kind of situation.